I experiment with a lot of new stuff for fat loss. It’s true, I am willing to try almost anything to see if it gets results and there is enough proof, either social or research to make me think it is worth trying. Some of these things that I try are great and others flop, some have probably even been adverse to my health for a while. Hey, it’s all in the name of getting you better results.

While this post isn’t really about a new training methodology or brand new supplement I am going to fill you in on three of my new favorite tricks or items that can get you great results!

Protein in my coffee!

Since about Christmas time I have been drinking more coffee in an attempt to get away from my Diet Mountain Dew habit. I have tried this before and it usually works fine while it is cold outside but then I go back to my old ways once the spring and summer roll around I the last thing I want to drink in the morning is a hot cup of coffee.

While this little trick isn’t new to me it was recently reintroduced to me by my wife. She is always making my life better 🙂

Lately I have been putting a scoop of flax meal (I will talk about that in a bit) and one scoop of protein in my coffee in the morning. Either vanilla or chocolate works, but I am partial to my chocolate flavored coffee. It seems to cool it down, make it tolerable for me to drink the morning and tastes great! Kim even loves it and she hates regular coffee. This is a great way to get an extra shot of protein in the morning and get your caffeine in as well!

The trick to this is using quality protein. Add it is slowly and keep stirring or it might get a little gritty. The flax meal will add a bit of chunkiness to the coffee and you can leave it out if you want but it is a great way to get some omega 3 fats in and fiber as well. If there is one thing that will keep you regular it is some flax in your coffee!

If you don’t want to make coffee I have another trick that I used to use a long time ago as well which is putting a small scoop of instant coffee, and now I think they even have little individual instant coffee packs from Starbucks, into your protein shake to give it a different flavor. What a great way to change up the pace of your shakes, especially if you are like me and pretty much live off them in the morning every day of the year.

Flax Pax

These are one of best things to happen to me in a while. In the midst of a pretty hardcore phase of my training and nutrition I needed to make sure in a reduced caloric state that I was getting enough healthy fats and fiber. Not to mention traveling usually messes with my digestive system and screws me up for days, this presents several problems when you are on the road pretty much every week.

Flax is a great source of omega 3s, it doesn’t replace fish oil, but it is a great way to help reduce some inflammation and balance out your intake of other fats including omega 6 and 9s. The majority of us don’t get a quality balance of these omega fats and our ratios are skewed in the direction of 6s and 9s. The one problem with flax is that you have to have it milled or meal, which basically just means ground up. If you eat whole flax seeds your digestive system won’t break through the outter shell of the seed and it pass through you and you won’t get the benefits of the healthy fats. However, it isn’t tough to find flax meal or milled flax to get in your diet.

The problem is usually that it comes in a big bag and you have to measure it out each time you want some and it is a pain to take with you unless you prebag all your protein supplement servings for the day. Well, I found a solution! They are called Flax Pax and it is an individually packaged 2 TBSP serving of flax meal that I can take with me anywhere, travel with it and it makes it easy to get in my healthy servings of flax each day. These things have been great to add to my shakes, but on salads and add a bit of healthy fats and fiber to my nutrition plan. You can find Flax Pax at Kroger in the organic food section right next to the other flax meals.

BCAA

BCAAs are not new to us in the fitness world. They have been around for ever and it stands for Branched Chain Amino Acids. These are basically the building blocks of protein and contain the essential amino acids needed for us to survive. One of the coolest things about these are that they are metabolized in the muscle of our bodies and not the liver. They are actually given to liver failure patients to retain lean muscle mass. You may not care about that unless you actually have liver failure. Some of you (I have seen you drink) may want to stock pile your supply of BCAAs 🙂

The real reason that these made my list is because I recently added these into my supplement program. Again, I am on a hardcore training and nutrition phase and tend to lost muscle mass like crazy as I try to get below a certain body fat percentage and body weight. I was trying to avoid ingesting carbs during my training as it slows down my fat loss, but I needed something to hold off muscle loss. IN come BCAAs! After just 5 days of supplementing with them I have noticed my lean mass is more defined, I recover faster and my fat loss sped back up. It was amazing. I look better than ever right now as I am dieting down to a low body fat percentage.

I completely tie this into BCAAs as that was the only change that I made. I no longer feel drained, I can kick ass during my training and I am not really hungry. It is a win-win. The easiest way to take these is in pill form and our partners over Prograde have some great research and info on it : http://forcefitness.getprograde.com/branched-chain-amino-acids.html

My recommendation is taking 2-3 doses prior to training and 2-3 after. If you are really training and dieting hard I would take that dose plus one extra dose or two with any snacks or between meals. This is a sure fire way to improve your progress as it maintains your lean tissue as you get lean and from what I can see keeps your metabolism running at full steam even if you can feed yourself every 3 hours.

This is definitely going into my must have supplement list from now on!